WOMAN: * I've got some *
* Loose threads *
* You *
* Couldn't help but notice *
* Some of my psychosis *
I tell you what, you keep coming back here to Texas,
you're gonna feel like you live here, right?
I like Texas. Absolutely the best people I've ever met.
Steve and I are back in San Jacinto County,
where we recently investigated the 1992 case
of Natasha Atchley.
Natasha's sitting in the front seat of her car.
Her doors won't open. She can't get unstuck.
And then all of a sudden, there's the fire,
and it's too late, and now she can't get out.
I don't believe she was murdered.
These people are innocent.
This time we're here for Rhonda Richardson.
Rhonda was a 59-year-old corrections officer.
Back in 2019, she went searching for her lost dog
and was found dead in the woods the next day.
I remember when this happened three years ago,
but it was a big deal on the news
because Rhonda Richardson was a TDCJ guard.
So she's law enforcement.
SPINGOLA: It's a different type of case.
I figured you would like it.
It's really a little bit strange.
You studied the pictures.
So what's your takeaway from all that?
SPINGOLA: Well, the hyoid isn't fractured.
There's no indications there was any trauma to the body,
but it does appear that she was scalped
because there's cuts along-- up to the temple
and then that hair is pulled right off.
And the way she looked out there is just enough
that I'll never forget this case.
Due to extreme decomposition,
Rhonda's exact cause of death could not be determined,
but it looks like she was scalped by her killer.
SIEGLER: And I know they have a good suspect.
I know he's a registered sex offender,
and I know he's weird.
But that's a far cry from scalping somebody.
That's a hell of a jump. You don't think
there's an animal out in these woods
who can grab ahold of her hair and bite that and rip it off?
I've never seen an animal do something like that
without leaving the teeth marks.
We can't be making some innocent man
go to prison behind this if he's not guilty.
The sheriff's office thinks
that this is a sexually motivated homicide,
and Steve agrees with that, but I'm not convinced.
I think it's possible
that Rhonda died of a heart attack or a stroke
and then was preyed upon by animals.
The last time we were here,
we thought that Natasha Atchley was murdered,
but we determined she died accidentally.
So I'm not ruling anything out.
SPINGOLA: I'm telling you,
these sex offenders are the weirdest ducks
I have ever come across in my life.
And you've seen more murders than most cops in this country.
How many scalpings have you worked? One.
I've had penises cut off. I've had breasts cut off.
Not the same thing as scalping.
- Yeah. Okay. - Not the same thing.
I'm gonna let you off right here.
I bet I'm gonna be right by the time we're done here.
- Okay. - Bet it's not a scalping.
She dropped dead of a heatstroke.
You got your defense attorney hat on today.
I know. I can't believe I'm sitting here
trying to keep somebody from going to prison.
I just don't think he did it.
- Hey, Kelly. - Glad to be back.
Yes, ma'am. Good to have you back.
- Good to see you again. - Yes, ma'am.
- Steve Spingola. - Omar Sheikh. Nice to meet you.
- Gary Sharpen. - Nice to meet you, Gary.
- Omar, good to see you again. - You, too, Kelly.
We just really appreciate that y'all came back
and y'all are now helping us close another case.
We're excited. Gary, we know it's your case.
You've been invested in it
and working in it ever since it happened, right?
Right from the beginning.
I've been in law enforcement for over 25 years.
I've never seen anything like this before.
This one was extremely brutal.
Rhonda was sweet and she was kind,
and she didn't deserve this.
I just wanna do everything in my powers to find her killer.
SIEGLER: Rhonda Richardson was 59.
SHARPEN: She was a very pretty woman
and everybody liked her.
SIEGLER: She had three kids, right?
SHARPEN: Yeah. Family was important to her.
SIEGLER: Wasn't there a time, too,
where she even helped raise her grandkids?
SHARPEN: Yeah, she did have them living with her
for a short time.
It feels like from reading your file and all your interviews,
Rhonda was pretty private.
SHARPEN: She was. She really stuck to herself.
She lived alone. She had a couple of dogs.
She treated them like family.
She worked for TDC for how long?
SHARPEN: Well over 20 years.
She got along with her coworkers.
Her primary job at the prison was with the operations side,
where she didn't have much to do with dealing with inmates.
Okay. You consider her law enforcement, right?
- Absolutely. She was family. - That's what he said.
Yep. So, on May 22nd in 2019, we got a 911 call.
Deputies responded.
They went out to a location in the National Forest.
There was a trail that was cut through the National Forest,
frequented by ATVs, four-wheelers.
It's extremely isolated.
And when I walked down the trail,
I saw Rhonda laying face first
about eight feet off the trail.
And she was fully clothed.
Her boots there right next to her.
There was no trauma to her torso,
her legs, her body.
Her hair's all up front. See?
That's all her hair up top.
Like something pulled her hair out.
The strange thing was, there was no hair
from the back of her neck all the way to the top of her head.
The skin from her scalp is completely missing.
And when we finally was able to flip her over,
that's when I saw that her face was completely missing.
Do you think that the injuries to the scalping
is postmortem, after she's dead?
Absolutely. It's postmortem. Absolutely.
Everybody's agreeing after.
SPINGOLA: In all my years of law enforcement experience,
I've only seen a scalping once.
If the killer was an obsessive stalker with sexual fantasies,
maybe that's what this was
or maybe a display of power or an attempt at a trophy.
These offenders are wired differently than you and I.
They're attracted to different sexual fantasies.
And each one is unique and different.
You guys are behind the eight ball here.
That body was decomposed.
It was out there for, I think, a day and a half in that heat.
The worst part is,
due to the extreme decomposition of Rhonda's body,
We don't exactly know how she was killed.
My experience leads me to believe she was strangled.
But at this time, we can't prove it.
From where her body was and her actual house
was half a mile maybe.
It's like a small neighborhood,
and it butts up to the National Forest.
Quite a bit of the people around the neighborhood
had come out, talking to the other deputies.
Neighbors reported seeing Rhonda the morning before
out searching for her lost dog.
The medical examiner determined
that she was likely killed soon after that,
just roughly 24 hours before her body was found.
She had no known enemies
or issues with former inmates or coworkers.
- Who was the 911 caller? - Jacen Clary.
And the Clary family lives out there in the neighborhood.
After we started asking questions,
we found out that this uncle, Robert,
was the one that actually discovered her body.
SIEGLER: Okay. Y'all wanna start with Robert Clary.
SHARPEN: Robert lived in a camper by himself.
He was unemployed.
Didn't have much of a personal life.
He'd been in and out of prison for most of his adult life.
Registered sex offender in San Jacinto County.
She knew who he was,
and there wasn't any type of like a friendship.
They were just neighborly.
Robert Clary told us the day before, on the 21st,
that he had actually helped and assisted Rhonda
with finding this lost dog in the National Forest.
He was on the four-wheeler. She was on foot.
She's out there yelling and screaming.
He's on the four-wheeler,
and they're separately looking for the dog.
SHEIKH: He said she was sweating.
He decides to go back home.
Is that the last time he sees her?
SHEIKH: Yes. Then Wednesday, he said he went to the woods,
and that's when he found the body.
And he takes pictures of her body
when he first discovered her, which just blew me away.
SIEGLER: Robert said he was trying to help the investigators
and was advised by an officer to delete the photos.
But was there more to his fascination with Rhonda?
And if so, what would be his motivation
to kill her, let alone scalp her?
In Robert's defense,
you got a search warrant for Robert's house, right?
Robert's house, Robert's truck, and Robert's four-wheeler.
- SPINGOLA: And nothing, right? - Nothing.
He volunteered that he would do a polygraph.
He said to eliminate himself
as a potential suspect in this case.
- SIEGLER: He failed it, right? - Yes.
My problem with the case
is that you don't have a completely thorough autopsy
that can definitively tell us
is it possible this is just natural heart attack, animal.
That's what I'm worried about-- that it's just a heart attack...
- Okay. - ...from a heatstroke.
Does she have any other medical history, though?
She's got blood pressure medicine. She's way overweight.
She took off a year before for a month for hurting her leg.
He said that she was sweating.
- And? - SPINGOLA: Red.
Very red in the face and about to pass out.
And she told him, "I can't take this heat."
But if she did have some type of a medical emergency,
we would've been able to see that with...
No. They can't tell it's a heart attack
'cause she was so decomposed.
There's a crime there, Kelly.
It's called "abuse of a corpse." That's not murder.
So, abusive corpse.
What about the scalping and the hair?
Like, did somebody else come upon her and scalp her after?
SPINGOLA: Well, does he come across this?
And he's got some attraction to hair. Again, I don't know.
- I don't think so. - And I'm the only one
who's sitting there worried that it's not a coyote
or something that yanked her hair off?
You don't think it's an animal at all?
He may have had some sort of sexual fetish.
- For feet. - Oh, come on.
- Where's the sexual assault?
Her clothes are on her...
Okay. Maybe he's feeling her up.
That's the thing about it, too,
is that strangely, why would she take off her boots?
I've done it before. I've done it before.
When you're hot with jeans on in 90-degree temperature...
- Then why not look for shade? - ...and you're burning up hot.
My head wants to explode here. He tells his nephew,
"I'm waiting for 'em to come and arrest me."
Who says that if you're innocent?
SIEGLER: He's been to prison,
so he's gonna be weird and defensive and odd and all that.
His behavior changed after this, for Christ's sake.
Where's the real Kelly Siegler?
Would you get a DNA sample and prove to me it's you?
- Calm down. - I'm fine. I am perfect.
We don't usually argue this hard on day one.
R-E-L-A-X, okay?
You're just mirroring what me and Gary went through.
No, it's fine. I'm not getting worked up.
I'm just--Honestly, guys, I'm usually there.
I'm not there yet.
I'm not saying we're not gonna get there.
But y'all gotta listen to me like I'm listening to you.
- SIEGLER: Ready? - SHARPEN: Yeah.
Gary and I are meeting
with Rhonda Richardson's daughter Amanda.
Hey. How it's going? You doing all right?
The dynamic between Amanda and her mom is a little different
because her mom was in law enforcement.
Out here in the country and raising three kids,
I wonder what that was like, growing up in a house
where you mom's basically a cop.
So, Kelly's here to help us out.
We just wanted to talk to you,
trying to figure out what had happened.
Just tell me a little bit about your mom.
My mom was a very private person.
She was getting ready to retire.
Had been working with the state for 25 years.
She loved spending time with her grandkids.
She helped a great deal with my daughter when she was born
and with my brother's kids and helped them out.
SIEGLER: How many grandkids did she have?
AMANDA: It was five grandkids.
At the time of everything,
how was your relationship with your mother?
I wouldn't say we were completely close,
but we didn't have any issues.
We had an on-again, off-again...
Just like a mother/daughter. Just a spat...
We had our quarrels. Yeah. But I left when I was 15.
- 15? - I did. I moved in with my dad.
She was trying so hard,
not realizing she was too overbearing and constrictive.
And I get it. I do now.
As a parent, I completely understand.
I just don't think she went the right way about it.
But I don't think she knew any other way.
- It's hard to be a single mom. - Yeah.
To not have the support.
And I couldn't imagine going through
what she had to go through.
He's told you and you already know
it is a hard case, girl. Okay?
I know.
I wish we could promise you something,
but we're not promising you that, okay?
There's a piece out there that will connect this.
- I don't know what it is. - I'm trying to find it.
I hope so.
Big mix of emotions.
I'm happy somebody's looking into it.
I'm sad to be reliving it and angry it's still unresolved.
It's strange that my mom worked for the justice system, right?
And, um, she hasn't gotten any justice yet.
And I'm holding out for that.
- Thank you. - Hang in there, honey.
Hang in there.
- How are you doing today? - Doing good.
Did you drive over here from Montgomery County?
- Yes, I did. - Okay.
The single most important thing in a murder is cause of death.
Because without that,
it makes it a lot harder to prove a murder.
So we brought in our expert.
Y'all don't give me easy ones.
I know. This is the hardest one.
I agree.
Dr. Pinneri has reviewed the case file,
and hopefully she can help us determine
whether or not this is some kind of bizarre sequence
of natural events or a murder.
Rhonda was found face down in a wooden area
on May 22, 2019.
It's clear that that is where she died.
It's clear that she died face down.
She is fully clothed except her boots are off,
and the socks don't really have any dirt or leaves
or anything stuck to the bottom of them,
which suggests that she's not walking around in her socks.
And she's not positioned in a way
that she just took her boots off and fell over.
The most striking thing for this case
is the differential decomposition.
Her head is very decomposed,
indicative of trauma occurring to that area.
Which would have been the scalping.
The exposed tissues, yes.
So the other thing we have to think about
is she's outdoors and could do this be an animal.
Most of them are gonna go for what's easy to get to,
and that's gonna be hands and feet.
What they certainly cannot get to is the front of her face,
and she has those sharp forced injuries
to the front of her face. I don't see anything
that looks like animal activity on these remains.
There's no teeth marks. There's no claw marks.
If the scalp would have been taken off by an animal,
they would have taken it and gone and eaten it.
So I don't think this trauma is postmortem animal activity.
I hear you with "it can't be animals,"
'cause that's what I was thinking it was.
So you rule that out.
But if we're talking about an attempt at a scalping,
which of these cuts are what's going on to make that happen?
It looks like they're coming right through here.
They describe some across the top of the head here.
But the two deepest ones are on the back of her head.
Do any of those rise to the level of a cause of death?
Not for me. It's really not hard to get a scalp off.
- It's not? - It isn't.
We do it every day we do an autopsy.
- It peels back easily? - It peels back easily.
If we're first trying to figure out cause of death,
what would you say?
Oh, gosh. I wish I could go back
so I could do the autopsy myself.
There's quite a few things I would do differently.
Autopsy's done on the 24th.
So two days after she's found, there's a lot of fly eggs.
Typically when somebody's found with a bunch of fly eggs,
you put them in a really cold cooler
to help slow that process.
And I don't know where she was stored,
but the fly eggs have all hatched.
The reason that's important
is they're going to eat the tissue around them.
We're not getting a good picture of what it actually looked like
because maggots have eaten away some of it.
Nothing is described that way to cause her to die instantly,
like she apparently did.
I mean, I would have to say "undetermined" unfortunately.
We knew that the other medical examiner couldn't say for sure
what happened to Rhonda,
but we had no idea it was gonna be this impossible to find out.
Had somebody who's on top of her,
grabbed her by the head, lifted her head up,
and start scalping her while she's face down.
But she would have to have been incapacitated...
You're right. Or strangled, choked out.
But they don't describe any injuries to the neck.
Well, you can't, because of the decomp--
Well, the hyoid bone, you should still be able
to see fractures in the thyroid cartilage.
There were no cervical spine fractures.
"The hyoid bone, thyroid cartilage
and cricoid cartilage were intact
and had no fractures."
So, when you have this
from the man who did the autopsy,
that there are no injuries to this area of her body,
y'all can't wish it into existence,
'cause you're stuck with this.
So, what do you think, Kelly?
I think you're screwed,
and I think she should've done your autopsy.
And it's not your fault. You tried, Gary.
When you do this job,
you know you're gonna have times where you disagree.
Gary disagrees with me, and I disagree with Gary.
I'm not mad at him, and he's not mad at me.
But where you're this far apart
on the beginning of a murder case
or a homicide case, which is cause of death,
how are you gonna fix that?
But thank you so much. It's frustrating.
- But we appreciate it. - It's a hard one.
You cleared up a lot.
That's the one hurdle
you can't ever just disregard or ignore
or pretend like it doesn't exist.
I don't know what we're gonna do.
What you thinking?
I was hoping we'd get a better answer.
I'll say this. You still have the chance.
You get some clean, clear...
Not a confession. You're not gonna get that.
...admission or slip-up,
you completed unknown manner and means.
But you gotta have some big new...
Something big and juicy might happen.
But you gotta have it.
The reality is, Steve,
you had a very good appreciation of this case
and reading between the lines way better than I did.
My husband Sam even said,
"So, Spingola was right and you were wrong."
And I went, "Yep. Yep, yep, he was. He was."
Giving you full credit, man.
Now even Kelly believes that Rhonda was scalped
by an individual and not an animal.
But we can't prove how Rhonda died
or that Robert Clary killed her.
WOMAN: * I see the clouds are rolling in *
How many times do you think
these murder cases you put together are just luck?
- That's all they are. - All the time.
There are times, like, we've investigated cases
and you're so far off, you know, for months,
and then something happens.
It's like, "Where the hell does this guy come from?"
Maybe getting a look at where Robert discovered her body
can help us figure out what we're missing.
***
We know that the day before,
Rhonda was looking for her lost dog,
and she was afraid that it might have run off into the woods.
But we also know that she was on foot,
and she was found over 1,700 feet deep into the trail.
Which is pretty dang far to have to walk.
- She was just right over here. - Put a piece of paper down.
Her head was right there.
Steve, what do you remember seeing from the pictures
that you thought were important?
Well, there's no drag marks. Whatever happens,
I think happens right here.
Socks on. The boots are off.
And the important thing about the socks was what, Gary?
There's nothing on her socks. No debris. Her socks were clean.
So, she comes this far off the trail,
and something else happens to knock her down,
to be prone on the ground.
When I came out here,
I was already looking for broken branches.
I was looking for anything that would show a struggle,
and I didn't see anything.
There's no injuries to her legs, her arms.
Just the head injuries.
When I rolled her over,
her face was completely just mutilated.
I mean, I was horrified.
SIEGLER: And the report says it's 1,791...
- Something like that. Yeah. - ...feet.
That's a long way in the shape she was in.
But I think a healthy person
wouldn't have walked this far into the woods.
This dog ain't coming back this far.
You don't think the dogs would come back here, huh?
- No way. - Hmm.
SIEGLER: Robert Clary rode around the woods on his ATV
and helped Rhonda look for her dog.
But according to him, he never gave her a ride.
So, how did she get out here?
How you doing? I'm Gary Sharpen.
I'm the lead detective on this.
I'm doing good. Thank you. How about yourself?
Dr. Dean De Crisce is a forensics psychiatrist
and an expert in criminal sexual offenders.
We've asked him for his insight
on what type of suspect would scalp his victim.
And we wanna see if he has anything
that aligns with what we know about Robert Clary.
Usually, there is two different types of mutilation.
One is instrumental.
The offender is trying to dismember the body
to obscure the crime to get rid of the evidence
without any particular emotional investment.
And then the other type
would be somebody doing it for gratification,
either because of extreme levels of hate and rage
or a sexual motivation.
From what I could tell,
it doesn't look like there was any attempt to hide the body.
So it's more likely that it was because of a sexual motivation
or extreme anger.
Individuals that do this type of thing,
they're likely to have a prior sexual offense history.
Usually offenders will escalate over time.
They may have done a rape before or an assault on a woman before,
and then, you know, they work their way up
to some offense of this level.
And it's likely that they knew the victim.
It's very odd to me that they left the scalp there.
Sexual sadists are known
to frequently take trophies of their killings.
To me, that's probably
what the person was likely trying to do.
The fact that the boots were removed from the victim
made me think that perhaps the perpetrator
had in intention to undress the victim.
And maybe they were interrupted.
They heard a sound or something like that.
Some of this sounds like Robert Clary.
I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot.
I hope I've been at least somewhat helpful.
SIEGLER: He is a convicted sex offender,
but if Robert Clary wanted a trophy,
he had all the time in the world to take it
because he's the one who found her.
He did characterize a lot of who Robert is.
He was familiar with her.
He does have a prior sexual offense history.
Remember that Robert Clary is the one
who talked to you, talked to the polygrapher.
He signed a consent to let you search his four-wheeler
and his house.
He offered up his DNA.
He's the one who led you back to her body.
True.
It doesn't make sense.
- It doesn't go together. - True.
I appreciate the doctor's insight,
but to me, this is all speculation,
and it's not as damning
as everybody in the room wants it to be
'cause it's not admissible.
I mean, I'm sitting here thinking,
why can't someone high on meth who's mad
be more logically consistent with this
than possibly Robert Clary?
- True. - I don't know.
Okay, So, Eric Devlin specializes
in cellphone forensics, and that's what he loves to do.
He's our expert that we bring whenever we have a case,
especially one as young as yours is.
It's only three years old, right?
- Right. - Let me go get him.
Rhonda Richardson's case is about as fresh
as a cold case can get,
which hopefully means we can catch a break
analyzing her cellphone and Robert Clary's.
- All right. - Take off.
- You ready? - Take it away.
We know that they exchanged a few phone calls
before her death on May 21st, which Robert has admitted to.
But what we wanna know is
if their phones recorded any other useful information.
So, in this particular case, I got a bunch of devices.
First one we're gonna talk about is the Apple iPhone
belonging to Rhonda Richardson.
It's the one recovered at the scene.
I was asked to focus on the activity sensors.
What these activity sensors are set to do
is every hour it updates how much you've walked,
stepped, or moved in the last hour.
I looked specifically for 5-21 through 5-22.
The last of the phone moving around
is at 2:00 p.m.
Rhonda was spotted looking for her lost dog
at 11:00 a.m.
According to her phone motion sensors,
she stopped taking steps in the woods
between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.,
which leads us to believe that's our murder window.
It's also right before Robert claims he left the woods
and drove home.
Turning on to Robert Clary's phone--
This is the one obtained by the search warrant from his trailer.
Here's what I did find that was gonna be interesting to y'all.
Location analysis.
These are actually the GPS points
that I actually pulled from the physical phone itself.
This is 5-21-2019 at 4:36 p.m.
He's hitting right here,
which appears to be where the trail starts.
- On the 21st. - On the 21st.
This one's the 4:35. This one's the 4:36.
He is heading in that direction.
- It's right on the trail. - It's right on the trail.
He's saying he went home, but now his phone
is showing GPS at 4:36 p.m. on the trail.
SIEGLER: Robert said he returned to his home around 2:00 p.m.
But his phone was on the trail at 4:35 and 4:36
going toward his house.
That's a big difference.
So, was he really out there in the woods the whole time.
Did he go home and then come back to the woods?
And why did he have to lie?
That's the best new thing we've heard all day.
That's enough for me to say, "Hey, explain this."
- Yes, it is. - Now, this might be
when he's coming back from scalping her.
Exactly.
DEVLIN: You know we're not done.
There's an interesting thing I'm gonna show you.
So, what you have here is this is 5-22.
There you go.
There is the thumbnails
for the pictures of the body that he took.
You see a whole bunch of 'em here.
3:47.
And then you have a whole bunch of them starting over at 7:48.
They're the same photos, but he deleted them
somewhere between the time he took it at 3:47.
He appeared to reload those photographs
at 7:48 p.m. and then deletes 'em again.
I found that to be weird.
- SIEGLER: On Wednesday. - On Wednesday.
SPINGOLA: We know Robert took photographs of Rhonda's body
at about 3:30 p.m. as his nephew called 911.
An officer had Robert delete them.
That's already kind of strange.
But it looks like Robert
actually downloaded those photographs again
from the cloud and back onto his phone later that night.
Could Robert have been looking at those photographs
and viewing them as a trophy?
Piece by piece, we're putting this together.
This is definitely a dagger in his story.
- Jacen's over here? - Yeah. That black truck.
So he should be home.
When Robert Clary found Rhonda's body in the woods,
he immediately drove to his nephew Jacen's house,
picked him up and took him to see the body.
And it was Jacen who called 911 at that time.
Hey, Jacen. How's it going, brother?
We're wondering if Robert's actions
seemed as strange to Jacen as they do to us.
I wish you all just take his ass to jail, get it over with.
Tell me why.
The day that all that [bleep] happened,
I was in the driveway right here,
and he came up on his four-wheeler.
My other brother across the road was over here helping me.
And he said, "Hey, I found a body."
And he got on his four-wheeler with him.
And his first comment to me
when we got away from everybody
was, "Don't tell them I came down here.
Don't tell nobody that I was down here."
And I'm like, "Bull[bleep]."
Wait a second. He--He--He said that?
Yeah. For me not to tell anybody
that he was down there I found the body.
Tell 'em I found it.
And I was like, "No, I'm not doing that."
You thought that it was odd that he didn't call the cops?
I did. As soon as we pulled up and I seen it was a body,
I immediately walked away and called the police department.
- What was Robert doing? - He got off
and was walking around the body and taking pictures.
Why in the [bleep] would anybody
in their right mind take a picture of something like that?
I don't wanna remember something like that.
He told me that they had had a couple of conversations before
and that he was texting her.
Did he seem like he was interested in her?
Yes. She wasn't necessarily the same.
So, she was rejecting him.
Would you say--Would you say- Would you use that word?
Rejection.
- Yes. - Okay.
Did he ever tell you he was attracted to her?
He made sexual comments towards her.
And we were having a family function,
and there was probably 30 people here,
and he started making sexual comments
about what he'd do to her.
- What's he saying? - I would eat her [bleep].
And he said it to her.
"She's single. I'm single. We can hook up.
She already knows what's a prisoner like."
And he knew a lot more than what he's saying he did.
Okay.
Robert was sexually attracted to Rhonda,
and that changes everything in this case.
Even Robert's own nephew believes his was involved
in the homicide based on his strange behavior.
SHARPEN: I appreciate it.
Wait until Kelly hears this.
Him telling Jacen,
"Hey, don't tell them I was the one that found her."
I came into this case
thinking that Robert Clary didn't do it,
and I've completely change my mind.
Yesterday, you got a true read
on how his own people think about him.
I was wrong.
I'll tell you this much, though, we ever have to go to war
with someone super criminal,
I'm taking you over every other D.A. I've ever had.
Well, that was sweet.
After talking to Robert Clary's nephew,
it's clear that the sheriff's department and Steve
were right about Robert Clary.
I'm finally convinced he's involved.
So, we still have a problem with cause of death,
but with Devlin's cellphone information
and the beautiful new piece that you got yesterday,
that's huge.
The law in Texas allows you in a case like this
where you have an unknown cause of death
to file it as an unknown manner and means,
which is what would need to happen in this case.
Let's split up and go hit the neighborhood,
and let's go knock 'em out.
If we believe that Robert killed Rhonda,
it would be great to try and get more evidence.
An admission would be wonderful. A confession would be a miracle.
Or finding some other witness
that knows some other little piece of the story
would be beautiful new pieces of evidence to try and find.
I thought about this for hours last night,
and I want him to explain his story again
in that time line.
Right up here.
That him there?
SHARPEN: That's him right there, dude.
It's time we talked to Robert Clary.
- Hey, Robert. - Hey.
- How's it going? - It's going.
SPINGOLA: We have questions about his strange behavior
and movements that day.
Will he deny it or come up with a new story?
SHARPEN: We wanna figure out what happened to Rhonda.
I have no idea.
I gave my statement to you,
and that's all I have to say about it.
I never knew the woman. All I know is she's the woman
that looks for her dog all the time.
We know that you were with her the day before you found her.
She was walking back and forth right here on the road
just screaming out there for them dogs.
She's the one that says, "I don't go in them woods.
Would you mind going in there? I'm looking for my dog."
So I went in there and looked for him.
SPINGOLA: You never gave her a ride down into the woods?
CLARY: Nope.
SPINGOLA: Do you remember when you left the woods that day?
Was she still out there or did she come out with you?
She never was in the woods.
She says she's going home and get her something to drink
and she might come out and look for the dog later.
SHARPEN: And you never went back out there?
And you're sure of that?
- Yeah. - Take a look at this, Robert.
Can you explain this? This is your cellphone.
SPINGOLA: That shows you you're walking
up and down that trail later in the afternoon.
SHARPEN: But you told us earlier that you weren't back out there.
CLARY: Not that I can recall that I was out there at all.
SHARPEN: This does not make sense.
It doesn't make no sense to me either.
SPINGOLA: Did you call her when you were out there?
No. I don't have her phone number.
You don't have her phone number.
No. Uh-uh. No.
SHARPEN: Obviously we know you called her.
- We know you talked to her. - SPINGOLA: In the woods.
No, I didn't call her and talk to her.
SHARPEN: Cellphone technology doesn't lie.
I'm not surprised that he has no explanation
for why his telephone was up and down that trail
later than he initially reported it.
But now he's denying even calling Rhonda,
which he admitted before.
I think that's the panic in him talking.
SPINGOLA: You found the body the next day, on a Wednesday.
Yeah. I thought it was a man laying there.
SPINGOLA: Why not just call 911 and report that?
'Cause I was freaking out. I'm going, "That's Eddie."
I wanted to go get somebody that--I thought it was him.
He might be dying in there.
SPINGOLA: Did you check on that body?
No, no, no. I didn't get off the phone.
I'm not gonna get off my phone
with a body laying there in the woods.
But you went back with Jacen and took pictures of the body.
I said, "Well, let me take a picture
and give to the--911-- the police when they get here.
And they said, "No, you don't need them on your phone."
And so you just deleted them once?
- Yeah. - Did you ever pull 'em back up
and look at 'em?
- No. - No.
I wouldn't even do that.
We know that those photos were downloaded onto Robert's phone,
just like we know he called her,
just like we know that Robert's story is full of holes.
SHARPEN: What you're saying to me
and what we have with the technology and the data
doesn't add up.
SPINGOLA: Tell us what happened out there.
Did you just go out there and cut the skullcap off?
- Is that-- - What?
Golly. That is ridiculous. No.
You're barking up the wrong tree far as I'm concerned.
If you don't believe what I'm saying,
there's no sense in me talking to you.
SPINGOLA: All right. I'm just telling you,
you haven't convinced me of anything. Have a nice day.
SPINGOLA: Anytime you can get a suspect
to contradict the evidence in a case, it's a big win.
and that's was a big "W" for us right there.
All right. Then our next one are David Talbert.
SIEGLER: We held off on talking to Rhonda's neighbors
because we didn't want Robert Clary to know
that we were reopening the case.
But now that Robert knows that we're doing this,
we're headed to talk to one of Rhonda's old neighbors,
David Talbert.
Hello. We're looking for David Talbert.
- You looking for David? - Uh-huh.
- He's down below. - Okay.
- Are you a Talbert, too? - I'm James Talbert.
James Talbert. Okay. And David is your brother?
- David. Yeah. He's down there. - To make sure we're thorough,
Mr. Talbert, we're out here talking to everybody
that might have any information
when Rhonda Richardson got found murdered.
I worked with her in the prison.
Oh, wow. We didn't know you worked with her.
Instead of David, we found his brother James
Who wasn't even on our list.
Fortunately, he knew Rhonda, too.
The day I think that this happened...
Tuesday.
Yeah. I saw her right here, and she was looking for her dog.
She told us, "I haven't seen him or heard anything."
She got ready to go back in the woods, and Robert showed up.
SIEGLER: You're talking about Robert Clary.
JAMES: Yeah. He was riding his four-wheeler.
And he'd already, a couple of days before that,
had trouble with her and her dog,
saying that they were coming down his place
and he would kill 'em if they ever come back to her place.
- How do you know that? - He said it.
Everyone heard him say that.
Heard Robert say that he would do what?
He would kill the dogs. He didn't say mess with her.
Robert is running up and down here with his four-wheeler.
He stopped to talked to her,
and I heard him say, "I'll help you find your dog."
She got on the back of his four-wheeler
and they rode that way.
That was the last time I saw them.
- Okay, time-out. - What time was this?
Slow down. The last time you see Rhonda,
she's on the bike of Robert Clary's four-wheeler.
She got on the four-wheeler right at that trail.
She was facing me, sitting on the back of his four-wheeler.
- SHEIKH: What time was this? - Between 12:30, 1:00.
My financial adviser was running late.
He said he'd be here at 12:00.
That's how you remember the time so well.
My financial adviser was here by 1:00.
She was on the back of his four-wheeler
and went that away, and that's the last time I saw her.
Oh, my God.
We just stumbled on an eyewitness
who knew Robert was mad at Rhonda
and gave her a ride on his ATV
within an hour of when we believed Rhonda was killed.
That's how she got out in those woods
and maybe part of why he killed her.
- Wow. - Oh, my God.
- Thank God. - We just solved the whole case
and figured out everything.
That never happens.
12:30 to 1:00, and he even knows why he's got the time right.
He sees Rhonda on the back of the four-wheeler.
Looking at him backwards, and she drives down the road.
SHEIKH: We're so lucky he was even here.
SIEGLER: Oh, my God. He's not even the right Talbert
that just happens to answer the door.
- SIEGLER: Double trouble, Rob. - Hello, Kelly.
Double trouble.
- Hi, Steve. - How you doing? How are you?
Good to see you.
I never thought we would get here,
but we are confident that we have built
a great circumstantial evidence case
in the murder of Rhonda Richardson.
I think we're ready to run it all down to y'all.
- Absolutely. - I gotta say, Rob,
you've never heard me say this before.
I was wrong.
I came into this case thinking it was an animal.
My heatstroke theory
Dr. Pinneri pretty much shot down like that.
There's no teeth marks. There's no claw marks.
I don't see anything
that looks like animal activity on these remains.
So, everybody in the room is clear
with marking this off the board forevermore?
- Yep. - Okay.
Okay. So, then Robert Clary.
So, Robert was the person that found her,
but he denied that he actually was on the trail with her.
She was walking back and forth
and screaming out there for them dogs.
You never gave her a ride down into the woods?
Nope.
Eric Devlin gave the analysis. And tell him what he found.
He actually found two separate GPS
on the phone itself
that showed Robert was actually on the trail 4:35, 4:36,
the day she was missing.
This contradicts his story that he left her at the road.
- Absolutely. - And then the beautiful part.
Omar and I stopped at the wrong Talbert house,
and James Talbert comes out, David's brother,
and tells us that that day
he sees Robert Clary pull up on his four-wheeler
and he hears Robert Clary say,
"I'll help you look for your dog."
I heard him say, "I'll help you find your dog."
He sees Rhonda get on the back of the four-wheeler
with Robert driving.
She got on the back of his four-wheeler,
and they rode that away. The last time I saw her.
The last time she has ever seen alive
on the face of this earth-- on the back of his four-wheeler.
I loved that we asked him, "You took pictures of the body."
"Well, I was trying law enforcement," he says.
- Oh, right. - So this gets better.
He said a skinny cop says, "Get that off your phone.
They're gonna take your phone." So he deletes it.
But then later on that night, he ups the photos again.
He's looking at the photographs that he erased.
He deleted them somewhere
between the time he took it at 3:47.
He appeared to reload those photographs at 7:48 p.m.
and then deletes them again.
Did you ever pull 'em back up and look at 'em?
- No. - No.
What are the odds that out here in the National Forest
there's somebody else out there?
That whole window, the beginning and the end,
there's only one human being on the planet that's out there.
- Right. - And that's Robert Clary.
And cellphones don't lie.
This was a really tough case.
I've never seen as much emotion
in this war room as we've had the last week.
Kelly and I weren't even talking.
If she was my work wife, I'd have divorced her by now.
But I think that we've come to a conclusion here
that Rhonda was murdered and clearly by Robert Clary.
- I think we have enough. - Let's go get him.
- Okay. - Go, go, go.
Let us know what the plan is.
- So, right here? - Park right here.
- Yeah. Right here. - Let's get ready to go, okay?
SHARPEN: We're about to go arrest Robert Clary
for the murder of Rhonda Richardson.
Our game plan is to go to the front door
and take him into custody.
Go get Robert.
[dog barking]
Come on out.
We have a warrant for your arrest.
Turn around. Turn around.
What am I being arrested for?
The murder of Rhonda Richardson.
Excuse me?
You know what you're arrested for.
Just have a seat in there.
SHARPEN: Rhonda Richardson was one of us,
and so I feel really good
getting this monster off the street
and, who knows, keep him from doing this to somebody else.
Down the hall.
***
WOMAN: * In the loneness *
* I will find *
Man, you ought to be feeling good.
I am.
Robert Clary is now sitting in jail,
and it's time to tell Rhonda's daughter the good news.
They may have had some ups and downs,
but Rhonda was her mom,
and I know she's gonna be thrilled to hear this news.
So, we arrested Robert Clary.
I knew it.
SHARPEN: Yep.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. What happened to your mom was horrible,
and we got the person responsible.
- He's sitting in jail. - Thank you, Gary.
There's no words. Oh, my God. I'm just--I'm so happy.
To finally have justice for her,
to have that closure...
to know that the person responsible is behind bars...
[sighs] ...it's a big sigh of relief.
The bond is $750,000.
He's a habitual offender looking at 25 to life.
He's not getting out.
It's over, Amanda.
Your mom was a wonderful lady,
and it's a senseless, horrible way
to end her life.
It's horrible.
Working on cold cases,
there are always gonna be things that you don't know,
that you can't know, that you're never gonna know.
Thank you so much for taking this on.
- I know it wasn't easy for you. - I wish I'd met your mom.
But what I do know is that I'm glad we worked this case.
I'm glad that Rhonda's family and coworkers can know
that they finally have some answers,
and the best part is that Rhonda can know, looking down on us,
that she's finally gonna get her justice.